Altaria, The Humming Pokémon. It dances and wheels through the sky among billowing, cotton-like clouds. By singing melodies in its crystal-clear voice, it makes its listeners experience dreamy wonderment. It sings in a gorgeous soprano. Its wings are like cotton clouds. It catches updrafts with its buoyant wings and soars way up into the wild blue yonder. If you hear a beautiful melody trilling deep among mountains far from people, it is its humming. It looks like a fluffy cloud when it is in flight. If it bonds with a person, it will gently envelop the friend with its soft wings, then hum.

Overview

The premier UU Dragon, Altaria. Even though it has poor stats compared to beasts like Salamence, it can still hold its own. It can be an offensive power house or a supporting wall. Altaria is pretty versatile. Natural Cure is amazing and really sets it apart from other Dragon types. Its support options are pretty good as well.

Ability

Natural Cure: a fantastic ability that allows Altaria to lose any problematic status it has by simply switching out. Incredibly useful on both an offensive and defensive set.

Dragon Dance Altaria is a fantastic sweeper in UU thanks to its great coverage, good survivability and nice Attack and Speed after Dragon Dance. Dragon Dance is an obvious on this moveset. Boost up, then sweep. Outrage is the most power physical Dragon move in the game, and it really packs a punch. However, it has the side effect of causing confusion after two or three turns. This is why Dragon Claw is an option. It still has reasonable power and is a nice, reliable option. Earthquake is required to remove the Steel types that love taking Altaria's Dragon moves. Ground is also an amazing coverage combo with Dragon. Roost gives Altaria a great recovery move, which is amazing on an offensive set like this. However, Rest is an option for recovery as it removes status without losing the boosts you gain from Dragon Dance. Sing is an unreliable option, but it could win the game for you. If it hits, Altaria potentially removes one of its counters from play and gives you more set up time.

Life Orb is the preferred item as it boosts Altaria's mediocre Attack stat and it has Roost to heal the recoil. However, Leftovers is an option to give Altaria more survivability.

Altaria has no move to boost its Special Attack, so an item will have to do. Draco Meteor is ridiculously strong at a massive 140 base power. It lowers Altaria's Special Attack by two each use, but as you will be running Choice Specs, switching out will happen often. Dragon Pulse is a more reliable attack, although two Draco Meteors is still stronger than two Dragon Pulses when factoring in the Special Attack loss. Flamethrower destroys most Steel types that try to absorb Altaria's Dragon STAB, with Hidden Power [Ground] stopping the Rock/Steel types.

Wall breaking Altaria. Draco Meteor is, again, obvious. Pure power. Earthquake gets rid of Rock/Steel types and lands a strong hit on any Poison types that thing they can take a hit. Flamethrower has amazing type coverage with the other two moves, making Altaria hit neutral on everything. It also lets Altaria hit any Bug, Steel, and Grass types hard without using Draco Meteor. Outrage gives Altaria a way of smashing special walls that want to take the Draco Meteor hard. Roost is for obvious recoil recovery.

Roost is the best recovery move in the game, and is needed on a support set. Dragon Pulse or Dragon Claw is dependant on whether you want to run special or physical attacks. However, Flamethrower is an option as it works great with Toxic. The secondary move depends on your first choice. Dragon Pulse users should go with Flamethrower, Dragon Claw users should go with Earthquake, and Flamethrower users should go with Toxic. All of these moves work great in their pairs and they should be kept that way. The support move could be Heal Bell for helping your party out with status, Sing to immobilise one of the enemy Pokémon for a few turns or Roar to phaze and rack up residual damage.

EVs and Nature:

Dragon Dance
Max Speed and max Attack for… maximum Speed and maximum Attack. However, a bulkier set could be used if you wanted Altaria to survive some hits. After a Dragon Dance, Altaria outspeeds Swellow, a base 125 Pokémon.

Choice Specs
Again, go on the offence. There isn't a point in investing in surviving when all Altaria is made to do is kill stuff. Max Speed, max Special Attack.

Mixed
112 Attack guarantees a 2HKO on 252 HP / 4 Def Relaxed Aggron with Earthquake as well as making Outrage hit harder. Max Special Attack is fairly obvious, giving Draco Meteor even more power, not to mention giving the Fire move more of a bite. The Speed EVs let you beat max Speed base 55s.

Support
244 HP is max Leftovers recovery. 16 Speed beats max Speed base 50s and is an easy number to reason. The rest is thrown into the defences to keep Altaria nice and bulky. The focus with EVs was on Defence because Altaria's Special Defence is already great. The nature is dependant on what moves you choose, but they both do the same thing.

Other Options

Agility, Dragon Rush, Featherdance, Haze, Choice Band

Altaria's Speed is ok, but Agility can push it to new heights. This also allows it to run a mixed set and add a lot more bulk and less Speed.

Dragon Rush is a stronger Dragon Claw, but with bad accuracy. However, it is an option if you hate being confused after Outrage, or if you are running a Gravity team.

Featherdance can be used to ruin a physical sweeper trying to hurt your team and pick on Altaria's weaker defence.

Haze can be used instead of Roar to get rid of boosts faster. Sadly, it doesn't switch them out, so Roar is better.

Choice Band is outclassed by Dragon Dance by miles, but it is usable. Outrage, Earthquake, Fire Blast, Dragon Claw, Aerial Ace, all of these could be used for a Choice Band set.

Countering Altaria

Steel types are normally the way to go, just watch out for Flamethrower, Earthquake, and Hidden Power [Ground]. Especially look out for Earthquake if your Altaria counter is Probopass, Bastiodon, or Aggron. Bulky Water types like Milotic can take a beating and recover back to full health, and ruin Altaria with Ice Beam. Ice Shard deserves a mention because, regardless of how fast Altaria is, Ice Shard is going to wreck it due to being a priority move. Bulky Ground types can also take a beating and, in the case of Donphan, use Ice Shard. However, they need to watch out for Draco Meteor. Chansey can take the special set and supporting set fine, just watch out for the mixed and Dragon Dance sets. Outrage will hurt. Pokémon that take neutral from most of Altaria's hits can normally switch in and survive easily enough. Bulky Normal types like Chansey and Miltank can do well against Altaria. Steelix is an amazing counter, only taking big damage from the Fire moves and boosted Earthquakes. Bulky Ice types like Walrein and Articuno can take a lot of damage and ruin Altaria with a STAB Ice move.

Altaria has had a few Animé Appearences. Most notably, it was used by Winona in her Gym Battle against Ash, Elite Four member Drake used one against Ash and Wilma had one to help teach Pokémon Draco Meteor. The rest are cameos